Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister

Gillian McAllister’s ingenious crime thriller, Wrong Place, Wrong Time, has a new angle on time travel mysteries. Her main protagonist is Jen, a successful practising lawyer in an apparently happy and fulfilling long-term relationship with her home-renovater husband Kelly, with whom she shares a high-achieving 19-year-old son, Brett.

We meet Jen sitting by the window, waiting for Brett to come home late on a Saturday night. Her serene existence is about to collapse, because when Brett eventually arrives, he is confronted outside the door by a mystery stranger, whom he immediately stabs and kills. Police are called and he is arrested. Jen and Kelly rush to the police station to see him but are denied access and told that he will be charged. They reluctantly return home and Jen eventually falls into a restless sleep.

That’s when the time travel starts, for when she wakes, it is the previous day and the murder has not yet taken place. Jen is desperate to change the events and prevent her son from being convicted of murder. Of course, both Kelly and Brett have no knowledge of what is about to occur and Jen feels helpless to change the future.

But the pattern repeats, and each day Jen is plunged further back into the past. Any changes she makes or people she consults evaporate at midnight as she struggles to find the cause of the murder, uncovering disturbing truths about the people she knows. If she goes back far enough, will she be able to understand what has happened – and will she be able to change the future so that her son does not go to gaol for murder? And is changing the future ethical or even possible?

This book, set in Liverpool, is brilliantly conceived and executed, with multiple interconnected themes of love, betrayal, organised crime, hidden identities, philosophy enigmas and a wide range of human emotions. The ending is clever and complete, with all of the strands drawn together in a convincing climax.

If you have not read any time-travel crime novels, Wrong Place, Wrong Time might be a good one to start with.

Reviewed by Peter Maywald
SMSA Member